New Novel From Gallivant Press

Stuff

A novel

By

John Crawley

Fire!

You are awakened before 6 am, before the sun has had a chance to warm the drought-parched land around your home. You are awakened by a fire brigade and told you have less than an hour to pack up your things and vacate the premises. You are told your home is going to be destroyed. There is nothing the fire fighters can do to save it.

Get out. Get out. There is fire on the way.  A forest fire breathes down your community and your home is in its path.

What do you take?  What do you keep?  What secrets, thoughts, dreams, lies and history are in those possessions you call precious? Your neighbors are collecting their things, life is spinning by you in a blur. It is time to leave, but one more thing. Just one–

And so goes the day David Taylor faced the ravaging forest fire that attacked his hometown. As he gathers his things to escape, we discover who he is, what he stands for and how fragile life, itself, can be. We urge him on, waiting for his final escape from the cul d’ sac that he has called home. We urge he and his neighbors to leave before it is too late. But there is always one more thing. There is always some more stuff.

Stuff is a novel based on the Bastrop fires of Texas in 2011. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and lives turned upside down. David Taylor’s was just one of these stories. But his tale reminds us all that stuff is not what life is made of – not entirely anyway.

A son away in the dark ops of the U.S. Navy, an ex-wife who stays on the edge of his life, neighbors with whom he has shared his small place on the planet– they all become witnesses to the devastation that rains down on the peaceful community of Holloman, Texas.

And for some, there is no escaping. There is only one more trip back inside for more stuff.